A Year of Food Blogging

I know I’ve said this time and time again but food is my love language and this blog has allowed me to really tap into a part of me that has often been moved to the bottom of my priorities in life.

I stated Plant Based Bre in May because May of 2013 is the month where I decided to fully go plant-based. I’ve learned so much along the way and felt that after my individual journey I could help others find a way to incorporate more plants and nutritionally dense food in their lives.

While creating a plant-based community I’ve learned a lot about myself, my ability to create, and what it means to be a blogger in a very oversaturated topic.

What I’ve learned -

Working through creative blocks

I started Plant Based Bre the summer before entering my Ph.D. program and truly had no idea what I was getting myself into. Over the last year, I’ve experienced one of the most stressful time periods of my life. The stress and busyness of a Ph.D. program quickly began to eat away at my deserve to write creatively because of how much I had to write for school, I was burnt out. On days where I couldn’t write a blog post, I found myself being inspired in the kitchen to create with my hands. I found a rhythm of between writing and recipe creating. Working through creative blocks is a huge part of blogging in general. You won’t feel creative every season of the year so it’s important to find your creative rhythm and follow what feels right because it’s easy to tell when a project was rushed or published just for the sake of posting.

Managing realistic expectations

I consider myself to be someone who is good at setting realistic goals… except when it comes to the growth of an online platform. For some reason I thought that my food blog would grain an enormous amount of traction within the forts 6 months so I hit a goal of 3k followers…. looking back I can see how setting such an unrealistic goal, in the beginning, made it difficult for me to celebrate my accomplishments along the way. At the 6 month benchmark, I threw out all of my goals/expectations, in terms of followers, and remind myself that I’m creating a community which can’t be done overnight or through buying followers (an entire blog post on its own). I’m excited to see where Plant Based Bre goes and I can only pray that it continues to surpass my expectations.

Finding my purpose

A lot of my reluctance for becoming a food blogger came from my tendency to downplay my contributions. For so long I hesitated about doing anything food related because I saw the food world online as “over saturated”. I counted myself out before I even gave it a shot. Once I stopped trying to talk myself out of starting a food blog and pushed some content out I began to receive a lot of positive feedback which made me realize that if you never put your workout out you’ll never be able to find what makes you and your work unique. Soon after I started my Instagram page I would receive comments and DMs from people thanking me for my work and my focus on creating foods rooted in my culture. I realized that just being myself and letting go of my own insecurities should allow me to find my place and purpose in a very saturated space.

Run your own marathon

In the creative world, it’s very easy to feel the need to push out content to keep page views consistent. I believe that creative growth/projects aren’t linear, it’s impossible to be creating at a high level 12 months of the year. Breaks while creating are so necessary for yourself and the content you produce. Take time out for yourself to rest in order to produce content that doesn’t seem forced. From my experiences I’ve learned that burning yourself out trying to produce large projects in every season will result in you feeling like your passion is a task on a to-do list, it doesn’t feel the same. I say all of this to say, be patient with your craft and creative endeavors. Focus on accomplishing the realistic goals you’ve set for yourself.

With all of that being said I’m so incredibly thankful for the people who reach out to send kind words or to let me know that they approve that work that I do, it keeps me going and reminds me of the bigger purpose.

If you haven’t already, cop my Plant-Based Cookout Guide and stay toon for an upcoming webinar on how I made an e-book with my iPhone and made 4k+ in revenue. Full of resources, tips, and tricks for starting your food blogging career.